Marcus

If you have any money, at all, you should read this book. The sooner the better. If you don't have any money you should also read this book.

There are a few reasons reading Crash Proof might not appeal to you:

-Peter Schiff is a somewhat controversial name in the investing world.
-Peter Schiff is a libertarian
-You never read non-fiction
-You never read investing books
-You never read business or economics books
-You don't have any money right now
-You're an optimist
-Etc.

All of those reasons are valid and understandable, but still, it will be well worth your time to read this book.

If you're disillusioned with self-help in general, but would like to feel happier (and who wouldn't?), I highly recommend looking into positive psychology. This book is a decent place to start. Happier is a good overview of practical positive psychology. It's written a style similar to many self-help books, it has practical suggestions and exercises, but it generally sticks closer to the more scientific approach of positive psychology that the author teaches in his extremely popular Harvard course.

If you're interested in some of the more philosophic or academic ideas in positive psychology, try Jonathan Haidt's Happiness Hypothesis or anything by Martin Seligman. Ben Shahar's style is much more practical for actually helping you lead a happier life than either of theirs, but at the same time, it's less intellectual. Either way though, if you're unfamiliar with positive psychology, it's worth your time to check it out.

I'm reading the series with Max (8) and he loves it. I think they're okay, but I can't get over the Harry Potter connections. My problem with the Percy Jackson series isn't so much that, that it blatantly copies the format of Harry Potter, but that it doesn't do it nearly as well as the J.K. Rowling. They are undeniably similar though:

Parallels (Harry Potter / Percy Jackson):
UK / US
Witches / gods
Summer at home / school year at home
Boarding school / summer camp
Harry / Percy
Hermione / Annabeth
Ron / Grover

The same:
An evil antagonist, once dead, slowly restoring himself to power with the help of traitor gods/halfbloods/magicians
Confused teenager and his two close friends as the main characters
Main character has major issues with his parents
Gods/witches constantly hide their magical doings from humans through diversion and subtle tricks

Despite all that, the story isn't bad, the characters are actually decent, the greek god connection is sometimes fun, sometimes even educational and the writing isn't too bad.

Edit: Just found a review that better sums up the similarities between the two series than mine does: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/50165597

It's a little cheesy at times:

“Truly, Priscilla,” he said, “when I see you spinning and spinning,
Never idle a moment, but thrifty and thoughtful of others,
Suddenly you are transformed, are visibly changed in a moment;
You are no longer Priscilla, but Bertha the Beautiful Spinner.”

“Look! you can see from this window my brazen howitzer planted
High on the roof of the church, a preacher who speaks to the purpose,
Steady, straightforward, and strong, with irresistible logic,
Orthodox, flashing conviction right into the hearts of the heathen.

Hilarious. It could actually justify even the amount of laughter in a 90's sitcom laugh track.

I loved this book, not because it's Russian and I love Russian books, or because it's old and I love old books, but because it's flat out a great story. The beginning is a little rough. I thought it was going to be one of those Russian books with so many names that you can hardly follow the plot. It's not. It's mostly love story, part political commentary (you can take the politics for what they are, they aren't too prevalent). The love story easily stands on its own. It's fast paced, keeps you guessing, at times is very touching and it's a quick read. If you're on the fence about it, just read it! You won't regret it.

I didn't read the whole book. I think the idea that we're reaching the end of history and the last man (a world of liberal democracies) is intriguing, but ultimately incorrect. Reading books like The Clash of Civilizations, authors like Thomas Carlyle and James Burnham as well as watching world events (notably 9/11, and the wars Iraq and Afghanistan) have convinced me that as nice as Fukuyama's vision of the future sounds, it probably isn't realistic.

A great guide to giving your kid a classical education, but you've got to be willing to commit a LOT of time to doing it, otherwise it'll feel completely overwhelming. I love the idea, but in our case following it closely wasn't feasible.

Even though we're not using it as a curriculum, we still refer back to it often for age-appropriate resources on the classics.

Nozick's musings in Examined Life are varied and interesting. His political leanings after a lifetime of philosophizing are much less brash than the ideas in his earlier work, Anarchy, State and Utopia. He no longer espouses anarcho-capitalism, and arguably not even libertarianism, making this, for better or for worse, the less shocking of the two books.

The other essays on non-political topics are interesting and occasionally enlightening, but not consistently enough to have me reaching for the book in my spare moments. Still, there's a lot of wisdom here and his approach to solving problems is fascinating. I'm shelving it for now but I'm sure I'll come back to it in the future.

In a perfect world I wouldn't have to read marketing books. I would create something useful, people would be drawn to it instinctively, they would offer me their equally useful creations and we would mutually thrive.

For the world we have, there is Mark Joyner.

The Irresistible Offer is a concise formula for effective marketing. It avoids moralizing and cross-promoting and lays out a guide for going from whatever you have now to a marketing approach that should help you attract good customers. It's available free online as a PDF (legally).

Edit: Just posted a full summary here: http://marcusvorwaller.com/blog/archives/2010/08/28/summary-of-the-irresistible-offer/ if you'd like the quick(er) version.

Fahrenheit 451 speaks for itself:

“The Book of Ecclesiastes would be fine. Where was it?”
“Here,” Montag touched his head.
“Ah,” Granger smiled and nodded.
“What's wrong? Isn't that all right?” said Montag.
“Better than all right; perfect!” Granger turned to the Reverend. “Do we have a Book of Ecclesiastes?”
“One. A man named Harris of Youngstown.”
“Montag.” Granger took Montag's shoulder firmly. “Walk carefully. Guard your health. If anything should happen to Harris, you are the Book of Ecclesiastes. See how important you've become in the last minute!”
“But I've forgotten!”
“No, nothing's ever lost. We have ways to shake down your clinkers for you.”
“But I've tried to remember!”
“Don't try. It'll come when we need it. All of us have photographic memories, but spend a lifetime learning how to block off the things that are really in there. Simmons here has worked on it for twenty years and now we've got the method down to where we can recall anything that's been read once. Would you like, some day, Montag, to read Plato's Republic?”
“Of course!”
“I am Plato's Republic. Like to read Marcus Aurelius? Mr. Simmons is Marcus.”
“How do you do?” said Mr. Simmons.
“Hello,” said Montag.
“I want you to meet Jonathan Swift, the author of that evil political book, Gulliver's Travels! And this other fellow is Charles Darwin, and this one is Schopenhauer, and this one is Einstein, and this one here at my elbow is Mr. Albert Schweitzer, a very kind philosopher indeed. Here we all are, Montag. Aristophanes and Mahatma Gandhi and Gautama Buddha and Confucius and Thomas Love Peacock and Thomas Jefferson and Mr. Lincoln, if you please. We are also Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.”
Everyone laughed quietly.
“It can't be,” said Montag.,

A large part of the book is spent explaining whether and why anyone would want to teach their baby to read. Will it HURT them? Will it RETARD their growth? Will it OVER-PRESSURE them? Etc. If you're already convinced that teaching your baby to read isn't going to mortally wound their infant souls then you'll be happy to have your intuition confirmed by data, and you can then proceed to skim the first 100 pages

The rest of the book gives a system for creating cards and starting to expose the baby to words until he or she can read. Treating reading like a game and doing it in small doses seems to work, as evidenced by the numerous testimonials towards the end of the book.

In this, the 21st century when we are amazed and privileged to live in the presence of devices such as the iPad and the iPhone there is, naturally, an app for that. Actually there are several. Dozens even. I chose “My First Words” which seems to have been designed by someone familiar with this book. So far, baby likes learning to read. Loves it. Is enthralled by it, and shows no signs of emotional or physical distress.

Check it out. Along with the app it makes teaching the little people the ways of the book easy and, as I mentioned, fun.

One of the recurring themes in the histories of men and nations is the idea that we can do what no one else has done because of our better [morals, understanding of history, philosophy, intelligence etc.:] (chose one). It's an almost mathematically precise pattern that we seem doomed to repeat. The verbal approximation it is: idealism leads to hubris leads to vice leads to downfall. Rinse an repeat. Niebuhr incisively confronts this historical pattern as it existed in America and the world in the 1950's, and, since it's a pattern, his analysis remains just as relevant today as it was then.

Not nearly as good as The Fabric of the Cosmos, but still a good overview of time, space and the thinkers who've begun to untangled them.

Meh. I though it was okay. It's Harry Potter with Greek Gods instead of Witches and Warlocks and minus the complex plot and fantastically creative mind of J.K. Rowling. I read it out loud to Max (age 8) and he loved it so, success.

I read, struggled to read, half of The Mysterious Flame, then stopped. It's a frustratingly boring book by a nostalgic, older bibliophile about, surprise!, a nostalgic, older bibliophile. The story starts shortly after the protagonist suffers a sudden onset of amnesia. To reconstruct his life, he spends several days in an attic reliving his childhood through books and music.

The plot has potential, but the writing is so contrived and the story moves so slowly that it comes out feeling like the book is just an excuse for Eco to both rehash his past and show off his erudition by quoting the most cheesy passages from a zillion obscure books, then tying the passages into magical and mysterious flames of memory.

If you like Marcel Proust and his journeys down the never ending miles of memory lane, you might like this book. If you're a hyper-nostalgic, older bibliophile, you'll probably love this book. If you're anyone else, skip it.

Review forthcoming, probably after volume 3.

I'd been meaning to read the Satanic Bible for a long time now, and now that I've finally gotten around to it... I kid. This book isn't the Satanic anything, but it is strange. At times while reading it I'd try to imagine how Rushdie came up with it. I can't. His life, his thought process are so foreign to me as to be almost other-worldly. I've never read anything like it. It's magical realism, but it really has little in common with the Latin American variety of the genre. The plot is fairly straightforward, but it is intertwined with so many strange dreams, transformations, sub-plots, backgrounds and most oddly, detailed religious and pseudo-religious events, rites, superstitions and metaphors that it is hard to imagine it all coming from the mind of one man. Every time I looked, i could see, or imagine I saw, symbolism, metaphor, literary allusions and philosophy. It felt like a book that I could read over and over without ever finishing it. In a way, it's strange. I can't tell if it is a work of genius that isn't as acclaimed as it deserves, or if it's the ramblings of a man who is at least a little deranged. It eludes easy categorization.

Woven into a very real and contemporary story of two men's experiences with emigration to England is their parallel experience of possible conversion in to an arch-angel, complete with halo, and a devil, complete with horns and cloven hooves. Sometimes their supernatural transformations are almost absent from the story. There are the expected clash of cultures, family drama, relationships begun and ended and at times, the story feels normal. Then there are long dream chapters of villagers led by a teenaged girl clothed in butterflies on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The arch-angel blazing down pedestrians with fiery breath of righteous indignation. The giant goat-devil who becomes physically and culturally larger than life, both outgrowing his attic home and sparking a popular movement. The juxtaposition is both jarring and enchanting. It makes it easy to get pulled into the story, despite being unfamiliar with almost everything in it and its non-negligable length.

A couple examples of the writing:

...now whenever a trunk was opened, a batch of wings would fly out of it like Pandora's imps, changing colour as they rose; there were butterflies under the closed lids of the thunderboxes in the toilets of Peristan, and inside every wardrobe, and between the pages of books. When you awoke you found the butterflies sleeping on your cheeks.

He stands motionless while small groups of residents rush past in different directions. Some (not all) are carrying weapons. Clubs, bottles, knives. All of the groups contain white youngsters as well as black. He raises his trumpet to his lips and begins to play.

Little buds of flame spring up on the concrete, fuelled by the discarded heaps of possessions and dreams. There is a little, rotting pile of envy: it burns greenly in the night. The fires are every colour of the rainbow, and not all of them need fuel. He blows the little fire-flowers out of his horn and they dance upon the concrete, needing neither combustible materials nor roots. Here, a pink one! There, what would be nice?, I know: a silver rose. And now the buds are blossoming into bushes, they are climbing like creepers up the sides of the towers, they reach out towards their neighbours, forming hedges of multicoloured flame. It is like watching a luminous garden, its growth accelerated many thousands of times, a garden blossoming, flourishing, becoming overgrown, tangled, becoming impenetrable, a garden of dense intertwined chimeras, rivalling in its own incandescent fashion the thornwood that sprang up around the palace of the sleeping beauty in another fairy-tale, long ago.

A lot of why I liked this book is because it gave me a few books to add to my queue. This is my first exposure to Bloom and my impression is that he's sort of a charming character. He's erudite and opinionated without being condescending or abrasive. I found his passion for books and literature contagious and criticism insightful. After reading this, I've started Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 and I'll probably read Blood Meridian after that. How to Read and Why gave me a new, or renewed, appreciation for memorizing poetry and by 2030 I'll probably have successfully committed Tom o'Bedlam to memory. Bloom also strengthened my resolve to read more Shakespeare and introduced me to Turgenev, a Russian I really look forward to reading.

I was pretty skeptical at first, but after reading it, I'd consider the book a success. It's helpful at understanding why literature is so important and is a great introduction and primer on how to read some of the world's best works.

There is a point in the expanding universe where things are moving away from us at the speed of light. Since nothing can exceed the speed of light, we can know nothing of what lies beyond that point. Not only that, but any currently known object that speeds beyond that horizon is lost to us forever. The only other way an object in space can disappear forever is by being sucked into the strangest type of star, a black hole. This second way of vanishing is the topic of controversy in Susskind's Black Hole War. Is something really completely lost when it goes into a black hole? Does it matter? Stephen Hawking (the other side in the “war”) believed the radiation that escapes from black holes is entirely uniform, devoid of information, and that once something crossed the horizon of a black hole, it was truly lost. Susskind, and a few others believed this theory of information loss was so dangerous that it undermined and threatened all we think we know about post-newtonian physics.

Not to spoil the ending, but as you might expect, Susskind won. Information isn't annihilated in black holes and the laws of physics prevail. But in Black Hole War, the journey is the show. In the battles on the way to discovering how black holes work, there is plenty to appreciate. For example, the holographic principle which says that the amount of information that can be contained in an area of space is equal to the amount of information that can be encoded in its perimeter. So if I take a sphere of space, maybe the one that includes your house and computer and you, I can know everything about what is in that sphere based solely on the information found on the outside of the sphere. It's weird. It's counter-intuitive I still don't really get it. Strange as it is, having fairly solid evidence of its truth was so important that was after Juan Maldacena, an Argentine physicist, showed strong evidence for it, a version of the song Macarena was written for him by another physicist, Dr. Jeffrey Harvey, and performed at a conference. Here's the last verse:

M-theory is finishedJuan has great repute The black hole we have mastered Q.C.D. we can compute Too bad the glueball spectrum is still in some disputeEhhhh! Maldacena!

Black Hole War

I thought the first book, [b:The Neddiad 63339 The Neddiad How Neddie Took the Train, Went to Hollywood, and Saved Civilization Daniel Manus Pinkwater http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170616941s/63339.jpg 61513], was a little better but this one was a nice continuation. It's imaginative and fun. If you're thinking about getting it for your kids or reading it to them, I'd say it's at about a 9 year old level.

After the first 50 pages confused me to the point of almost shelving it, Under the Volcano's spiraling mix of numbing vice and intoxicating prose slowly sucked me in. It reminds me of Nabokov's Lolita. They have the same unbearable depravity; appalling for the degeneracy, appealing for the luxurious narrative. Both have endings that leave you gasping.

“What for you lie?” the Chief of Rostrums repeated in a glowering voice. “You say your name is Black. No es Black.” He shoved him backwards toward the door. “You say you are a wrider.” He shoved him again. “You no are a wrider.” He pushed the Consul more violently, but the Consul stood his ground. “You are no a de wrider, you are de espider, and we shoota de espiders in Méjico.”

Under the Volcano

I like this book because it's about a big, old, dark house in downtown Mexico City. I've never been to Mexico City, but I've been in big old houses in other Mexican towns, and this is the perfect story for bringing back their peeling paint, hard tile floors, high ceilings, scarce light and lost in time aura.

The three main characters are a mysterious and beautiful young girl, the Mexican version of Mrs. Havisham and a young male student. Mix them all up with some magical realism, time distortion and seriously whack relationships and you're left with Aura.

Here are a couple passages from the book, in Spanish.

This is the basically the same conversation that Robert Jordan has with María at the end of For Whom The Bell Tolls. Let's just say it works out a lot better for Jordan than it does for Felipe Montero in Aura:

—¿Me querrás siempre?
—Siempre, Aura, te amare para siempre.
—¿ Siempre? ¿Me lo juras?
—Te lo juro.
—¿Aunque envejezca? ¿Aunque pierda mi belleza? ¿Aunque tenga el pelo blanco?
—Siempre, mi amor, siempre.
—¿Aunque muera, Felipe? ¿Me amaras siempre, aunque muera?
—Siempre, siempre. Te lo juro. Nadie puede separarme de ti.

Tocas en vano con esa manija, esa cabeza de perro en cobre, gastada, sin relieves: semejante a la cabeza de un feto canino en los museos de ciencias naturales. Imaginas que el perro te sonríe y sueltas su contacto helado. La puerta cede al empuje levísimo, de tus dedos, y antes de entrar miras por ultima vez sobre tu hombro, frunces el ceño porque la larga fila detenida de camiones y autos gruñe, pita, suelta el humo insano de su prisa. Tratas, inútilmente de retener una sola imagen de ese mundo exterior indiferenciado.

I first read this waaaaay back in my first semester of college in English Lit 101. The theme of the class was “Apocalyptic Literature.” I think what I got from it at the time was something like “river...natives...crazy guy...movie made about book.” I probably wrote a five paragraph essay about it. I've been sort of curious about it since then and picked up again, it's a quick read.

It's hard not to wonder what you'd do if you were in Kurtz's situation. Up a river in the Congo, suddenly finding yourself free of any social mores and among a primitive people who alternate between worshiping you and wanting to kill you. The Thames couldn't feel further away and the allure of the jungle is strong. I don't know. I can see myself going native.

These are some of my favorite quotes:

Supernatural fear in the darkness of the Congo:

...then the usual sense of commonplace, deadly danger, the possibility of a sudden onslaught and massacre, or something of the kind, which I saw impending, was positively welcome and composing. It pacified me, in fact, so much that I did not raise an alarm.

But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power.

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right, and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it to be.

The Neddiad really lives up to the awesome cover art that drew Max (age 7) and I to the book in the first place. It starts off thoughtful and interesting; a kid in 1940's America with a quirky family doing all-American things. It quickly gets strange. Very, very strange. I really liked how despite the weirdness and among all the ghosts, aliens, shamans and legends the story keeps its reflective charm. The ending is abrupt but it's a fun book and we're looking forward to The Yggyssey.